The Experimental Fantasist

Games are things in their own right, and not just a set of tools for creating a shared experience.  I’m not just talking about games-as-artifacts, though a well-made game book is a beautiful thing. Mostly, I’m talking about the rules as a structure, as a machine made of words.

In his graphic novel From Hell, author, magician, and professional mad bastard Alan Moore wrote, "If there is one place that gods inarguably exist . . . it is in the human mind, where they are real, in all their grandeur and monstrosity." He has since spent a good deal of his time exploring that idea and its implications for spirituality and magick.

Well, there are three things I’ve learned from my first two weeks of “serious” blogging.
 
First, my service provider will fail at times. This will screw up my posting and sometimes my existing content. When it happens, fix it and get back on the horse.
 

Hello, all. Not an auspicious start, I'm afraid.
 
I fell ill last week, and I haven't gotten a process for queuing posts for automatic publication in place, so I'm afraid I've missed a week. Problems with my hosting service didn't help any.
 
Regular content will resume today or tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

I now know that the place I sensed just outside of my sight was the imagination. I knew it then, but I didn't have the words for it. Barsoom, the Hyborian Age and Earthsea weren't places I could drive to, I knew. Still, I had the sense that they were real, by some measure of reality that was different than the way in which my house and my dog were real. There was resonance there. Things in the stories touched on things in life. Conan’s thrill at combat and adventure was as real as the feeling I got running, jumping, and hitting other boys on the football field.

My name's Lon Sarver, and welcome to my blog. It's about imagination and fantasy, and how these enrich our lives.
 

I'm working on my new blog, The Experimental Fantasist. Posts on genere fiction, role playing games, and modern Paganism, as close to five days a week as I can manage. Starting monday.

With any luck, The Experimental Fantasist will begin posting content on Monday, February 28th. The plan is to do 400-500 word essays, as close to every week day as I can manage, on diverse topics related to imagination, specifically genre fiction, role playing games, and modern Paganism.
 
The purpose of this bit is to test the social media links and the WYSIWYG editor. Actual interesting content is coming soon.